Yet another marriage of convenience refusal

[pocoloca]

Hi all,

I have very similar problem. I´m from Slovakia and my husband is a Mexican national, currently living together in Mexico. We would like to go to the UK in January to study English and work, possibly study Masters degree in the future. He got his application refused under regulation 7 and 12 stating:

" Whilst you have stated you have known each other since 2013 there is very limited evidence of this statement submitted with your application. Other than a marriage certificate no other concrete evidence of your relationship was submitted. In the absence of any detailed evidence regarding your relationship which you claim to be over 4 years old and its development, the circumstances of your meeting and any documents linking you to each other, I am not satisfied that you are in a genuine relationship and that your marriage is one of convenience entered into for the sole purpose of obtaining entry into the UK.

In view of your failure to provide satisfactory evidence, I am not satisfied that you are the family member of an EEA national in accordance with Regulation 7 of the Immigration Regulations 2016."

For me it doesn´t make sense to get married and wait two years to apply for the Family Permit to enter the UK if our relationship is arranged with the only purpose to enter the UK.

We met while I travelled around Mexico and I stayed here ever since. Our relationship started few days after met, four years ago, and we´ve been married for over two years. We live together since we met but we don´t have any documents with both our names on it since at the beginning we lived in my husband´s apartment (he signed the lease before we´d met) and later I bought a house (before we got married and the house is under my name) where we currently live together. All our utility bills have either one or the other name and we don´t have any joined account, as a temporal resident you are not allowed to open a bank account in Mexico.

Basically the only prove of our relationship we have is the marriage certificate, some photos (we are not big fans of taking pictures of ourselves) and some plane tickets when we travelled to see my family.

We are thinking of appealing the decision as it is complicated for my husband to travel to Mexico City to submit his new application but I am concerned about time, how long does it take for the appeal to be considered? What is recommended?

In a case we decide to appeal, which date is considered to indicate the beginning of the 28 days period? Is it the date of refusal? Is it 28 natural or working days?

I also thought of submitting some screen shots of our chats as an evidence of our relationship but it´s all in Spanish, I´m not sure if it is valid or would I need to translate it?

I am not certain wether I should write some explanation letter or statement for him.

I´ll be happy to read your comments, I´m so disappointed and desperate. Our economic situation is quite difficult here in Mexico, I cannot work so we really want to go somewhere we can both work and live peacefully together.

[AdInfernos]

Page 11 of this guidance for entry clearance officers shows the documents you may be required to produce:

https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/s ... 2_0EXT.pdf

There's also some guidance on supporting documents here:

https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/s ... permit.pdf

Perhaps utility bills will be acceptable as long as you can produce some in your name and some in his where the address is clearly the same, as this would show both of you live at the same address.

In addition, on what basis are you staying in Mexico? You say you are a temporary resident. What do you mean with that? If you obtained a residence permit based on your marriage, perhaps that can also be used as evidence.